Ehh...I dunno, I always thought their album covers were uncreative. "Jazz" and "The Game" are boring, same with "The Works". "A Kind Of Magic" isn't bad, but it's not the best..."The Miracle" is just freaky.

I still like the Jazz cover...it doesn't give you any idea at all of what's inside, which I like.

And the original Game covers on LP were cool since they were shiny (printed on an aluminum-foil type material).

Jazz was better on a big album too...a nice shiny black. Everything looks bad on a CD cover :)

I have The Game vinyl with the shiny aluminum cover, too. That's what made that cover cool.

IMO, too flashy an album cover can distract from the music which is why you are buying it in the first place. Look at The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon. Those covers were pretty boring, but the music was fantastic! Same thing with The Works or The Game. The music is what counts.

Well it's pictured in the Hollywood release of SHA. Unfortunately it states (France). LOL

It's also pictured in the 2nd row of the "Box Of Tricks" poster.

Where the hell is Malta anyway? I love their balls.

Edit: "The Maltese Archipelago lies virtually at the centre of the Mediterranean, with Malta 93kms south of Sicily and 288kms north of Africa. Gibraltar is 1,826kms to the West and Tel Aviv is 1,940kms to the East."

I take it that last part of your post was for the benefit of our North American friends. ;)

Trancer's page mentions that it was a radio-station promo which had the UK single inside, but I'm sure I've seen a page somewhere that goes into detail about all the Maltese covers and there unofficalness.

Anyway, there's no way that Queen would have seen the design-proof for this

These days it sounds like Brian and Roger and probably Jim Beach have to give approval to things for them to be 'official', but I suspect that it was much different in the early days. It may have been left up to the individual branches of EMI and Queen having no choice but to rely on their judgement.